Last Friday, I was waiting while my wife picked up our takeout dinner and I noticed a marketing slogan in the window of the local bakery.

It read… “Life is short. Eat dessert first.”

Great!

Fortunately for my waistline, they were closed for the day.

How about you?

Seen any great taglines lately? Add them in the comments below or email a picture of them to support@marketingforsuccess.com and we’ll add the best here.

Charlie

P.S. The next day, while riding in the back country of Greenwich I saw the following on caterer’s truck. “Making your home the best place to eat.” Again why is it I’m noticing all the marketing slogans that have to do with food?

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

If you live in a small town like mine on the Connecticut coast, you’ll be spending the 4th of July watching fireworks, along with your family and friends and everyone else in town. Why is it that people love fireworks?

Fireworks grab attention with a dazzling display of color and lots of noise. Unlike the sparklers you can hold in your hand, the sound and size of fireworks can’t be ignored. Imagine if your small business marketing was as effective at getting people’s attention!

Diane was starting a new business coaching service and came to me looking for small business marketing fireworks. She knew that she needed a marketing message, one that described what she did and would get her prospects’ attention. Her dilemma was that she works with clients to solve numerous types of problems and instead of having one strategic marketing message, she had a laundry list of them.

Solving lots of problems is good, but when you are trying to communicate what you do, it’s the equivalent of a handful of sparklers as compared to having one large attention-getting display.

Discover exactly how to get attention and more business with your marketing message and improve the response of everything from your ads to your web site. Get the details >>

In order to grab prospects’ attention Diane dispensed with her laundry list of messages and replaced it with one umbrella marketing message.

Here’s how you can create your own brilliant marketing message:

1. List the concerns of your target market relative to your services. This should generate a list of 10-30 problems you solve.

2. Organize your list in order of importance to clients.

What are your clients’ primary concerns?

3. Use the most important client concern on your list as the basis for your marketing message. If you don’t have a summary sentence, then write one.

In our town when a particularly spectacular firework goes off, the audience ooh’s and ahhs. You may not get ooh’s and ahhs from your small business marketing message but you do want it to prompt prospects to action.

When you use your marketing message, fireworks or at least a spark should ignite in your prospects’ minds when they make the connection between their needs and your services. If your marketing message has done its job, people will ask you how you do what you do or contact you for more information.

With a brilliant small business marketing message you’ll grab your prospects’ attention and increase opportunities.

Want to see your sales explode?

Use this link to find out how in 15 seconds >>

- Charlie

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..

When you use the same approach everyone else does, your marketing takes on a “me too” look and your prospects have no idea why they should bother doing business with you versus the competition or just not doing anything at all.

Want a better response from your marketing? Want your prospects to actually contact you and buy from you?

“Me too” marketing is marketing/advertising that looks, sounds, and reads nearly identical to your competition’s marketing. And it can kill your prospects’ interest and your business.

Here’s what most small business owners do. They know they need an ad, a marketing message or a website. So what do they do, they copy what their competition is saying nearly word for word.

This is “me too” marketing because your marketing says exactly the same things as your competition, such as, “great service, low prices, friendly and convenient” and a laundry list of other generic benefits your competitors is listing in their marketing.  Basically, the only thing that is different in the marketing message/advertisements is the name of the company – everything else is nearly identical.

If you want to see “me too”  marketing in action, pickup your local Yellow Pages phone book and go to the “contractors” section (or any section for that matter). Contractors are some of the worst offenders of me too marketing. Let me guess what you will see as benefits:  Free estimates, licensed, insured and bonded, family owned and operated, in business for over 20 years, etc. The ads all say the same boring things. Only the company names are different.

Now put yourself in the shoes of your customer.  If all the companies in your buying category are saying the same thing, how do I choose which one to work with? You may just start randomly calling starting with the first company and work your way through.  Or, a unique ad and message catches your eye because it stands out and is different. Maybe it uses different colors in the ad, or it uses a big strong benefit-rich headline, or best of all, it focuses on THE CUSTOMER instead of on your business. The key is you want your marketing to look and sound very different than your competition.

Okay great. So how do I make my marketing message different and better? Here’s how:

Make a list of what selling points your competition is using and try NOT to list those same benefits. Focus on telling the customer how your company is different and better and why doing business with your company offers a greater benefit for the customer than working with your competitors. Prove to me why I as a customer should choose you. Make a list of the top 3 major reasons why you should do business with us instead of our competition.

Focus on what your customers care about most-how working with you will benefit them and prove it to them. Include customer testimonials in your marketing. Offer money-back guarantees. Offer free information such as call us today (or go to our website) and we’ll mail you a free report on the 10 most important things to consider when hiring a contractor (choosing an insurance agent, choosing a dentist, choosing an accident attorney, choosing a moving company, choosing a roofer, choosing a well drilling company..you get the idea).

Most important of all, give your marketing/advertising a fun personality. For some unknown reason people seem to think business sales messages have to be cold, stuffy and boring. Guess what? PEOPLE HATE COLD, STUFFY AND BORING!

Give your marketing personality. Have fun. Think of your business as a cartoon character and think of what type of personality that cartoon character would have. Make customers laugh. Write your marketing message as if you were talking to your best friend. Use real everyday language and slang just as you use when talking to friends.  Marketing is not the place to be an English professor. Have fun! Stand out. Be outrageous! In fact, the more outrageous the better. Make your customers say, “I need to do business with them-they look fun.”
- Peter

©2012All Rights Reserved by Charlie Cook or Blog Post Author..